


only me and my disgrace

by sharkfights (feartown)



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: ...since delphine and cosima made out, F/F, [rose dawson 'it's been 84 years' gif], also as usual spoilers for everything to date, i'm drowning myself in red wine to cope, should i also warn for DELICIOUS UNRESOLVED ANGST?, that happens, when will the madness end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-14
Updated: 2014-06-14
Packaged: 2018-02-04 15:16:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1783678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feartown/pseuds/sharkfights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It hurts more and less than she wants it to, but mostly it serves as a thoroughly unneeded warning: Cosima has a clock inside her that is counting down to the exact same set of zeros.</p>
            </blockquote>





	only me and my disgrace

**Author's Note:**

> I did valiantly (this is a dirty lie) try to get this done last week, but apparently I'm actually incapable of posting fic outside the 24 hours before every /other/ Orphan Black episode, so. It's been kinda reworked from a post-2x07 tag to a post-2x08 tag and I'm not really sure what the point was in either of them, but here it... is. Compelling reasons to read, huh. I'm a great self-promoter. 
> 
> Anyway happy Orphan Black day I guess, let us all pray for Delphine to start blowing shit to pieces and just straight up murdering everyone while using her super-serious voice and almost non-existent French accent. That's the show I wanna watch.

* * *

 

 

 

 _You are running out of time_.

 

 

There is a sob shaking in Delphine’s chest, a heavy cloying weight that has hooked between her ribs, caught around her heart and won’t let go. She has held it in up the endless flights of stairs, held it in through the lobby of DYAD and into the bitter, freezing air.

It’s only now, around the corner, out of sight, that it chokes out of her in a raw, hiccupping spasm that clings to the brackets of her jaw, seizes through the bones of her fingers.

She has been Delphine the traitor, Delphine the secret-seller, Delphine _I-wanted-to-trust-you_ and _how-can-I-believe-that?_ Not two days ago, Cosima once again believed her a wolf only out for herself.

She could handle that. She could handle Cosima angry and strong and made of iron, locking her out of the lab. Cosima alive and full of fire. What’s breaking her apart, tightening its grip around her neck, is the thought of Cosima knotted up on a hospital cot and slowly slipping out of her grasp.

Saliva coats her teeth, thick and hot.

Cosima, dead in the lab, cracked open like Jennifer Fitzsimmons. A statistic in someone’s report: _324B21 has terminated_. The thought hits like surf against rocks, pulling out then crashing back, shapeshifting and relentless.

Delphine drinks in a breath, tries to straighten herself out, tries to pull on her clothes and flatten out the creases. All she can feel is the echoes of her sobs, leaden and scraping against her chest.

 _You don’t understand_.

Cosima doesn’t understand that the Earth is hollow without her. That if she’s gone, if this sickness swallows her down its throat, Delphine has nothing.

 

 

 

She walks into a bar and orders wine, a deep blood red that sticks up the sides of the glass, red that leaves a sour taste. Men look at her – men have always looked at Delphine – but miraculously none approach, and she wonders about the razor-cut line of her shoulders, whether it might be convincing them to back away.

Cosima should be here, laughing easy next to her, looking at Delphine with clever eyes that say _later_ , _later_. Her hand should curl around her elbow, palm up her thigh, tap promises into her skin. She wants the ease of it, the quiet lean and smile of it. She wants Cosima, brazen and charming, to ward away the shadows at the corners of her eyes.

The red in her glass could so easily be the red she still feels on her hands, under her nails; the slippery dark smearing over Cosima’s lab coat and wet under her knees where they bit into the floor.

She feels sick.

She thinks of Aldous Leekie, whom she has had little time to mourn. She doesn’t know that she even should – Aldous used her, used Delphine the way men always use her: for her body, for her charm, for her steady laugh and the careful cling of her mouth against skin. He didn’t _love_ her; his love was reserved for an army of clones.

But no, he is dead and she has felt it crawling on her in shivers. She remembers him sly at her neck, his hands gripping her waist, and thinks of all he is now – meat and bone buried in the ground. It hurts more and less than she wants it to, but mostly it serves as a thoroughly unneeded warning: Cosima has a clock inside her that is counting down to the exact same set of zeros.

Some brave, bold man finally approaches from the other end of the bar. Delphine wants to laugh. Like a skittering deer in the woods he wants her knees to buckle and her heart to stutter against her chest, probably, wants to settle her between his jaws and feel her body quake.

But he’s not the predator today. Delphine clenches her teeth and the muscles in her thighs, some deep-buried growl sounding in her gut.

“Can I buy you a—”

“You can if you wish,” she replies, all gravel and bark under her tongue, “But I will not be here to drink it.”

She downs the rest of her wine, picks up her coat. Fleetingly, she looks at the man next to her – shorter, bulkier, mouth gaping like a trout – and imagines ripping out his throat. She thinks, perhaps, the stick of _that_ red would be satisfying.

 

 

 

When she gets back to the DYAD, one of Rachel’s assistants approaches her.

“Ms Duncan would like to speak with you,” he says, with that undercurrent of fear she associates solely with the thought of Rachel.

She follows him to her office.

“Dr Cormier,” Rachel says, talon-sharp. “Please, come sit down.”

Apprehensive, Delphine crosses the room and sits next to Rachel on the couch.

"I'm sorry about Cosima," she says, and somehow Delphine knows she's being genuine. Rachel is enigmatic at the best of times, but there is an air of sincerity in the crease of her brow, her hands unsettled in her lap. Like she might want to reach out and comfort. Apparently there is less machinima to Rachel Duncan than meets the eye.

“None of us hoped for this,” she continues, and Delphine wonders what she means by _us_. “But now that my… father is under your care it appears there is a possibility of a cure in the information he has brought with him, correct?”

Delphine nods.

“Good.”

She stands, and there is an unspoken command for Delphine to remain seated. Rachel Duncan is a woman who wears power as easily as clothing, and she wants Delphine to know which one of them is in charge of this conversation. A sleek, shark-like being above her, Rachel adjusts the line of her skirt and doesn’t look at Delphine when she speaks.

“Delphine, I want you to understand something. There have been innumerable liabilities peppered throughout the history of this project – of which _you_ are one, I should add – but they are going to stop. Now that Aldous, tragically, is gone, I need someone in charge of the science whom I _know_ will answer me truthfully.”

She pauses, and Delphine fears what’s coming.

Rachel seems hungry and caged in this room, pacing listlessly like the apex predator she is. She turns back to Delphine, looms over her and looks down the line of her nose like Delphine is a tiny gravel-speck on the dusty earth.

“I would like that person to be you, Dr Cormier, but I will need certain… _assurances_ that you will not go astray. That you will put the science first. Your role as Cosima’s attack dog – as noble and _quaint_ as it is – needs to come to an end.”

All Delphine hears is: _I want you to lie to Cosima_.

She swallows. The heady reminder of weed sits heavy on her tongue. “I—”

“You may take a day to think about it, of course,” Rachel says, cutting her off. “However, you should know this: replacing you on the project would be difficult, but not impossible. It would be wise to keep it in mind when you make your decision. You may go now.”

So it’s not a lucrative offer, but a veiled threat. Delphine leaves Rachel’s office with her stomach sitting somewhere near her feet, and feels like sobbing again. Rachel wants a drone, she wants Delphine the spy; traitorous and shadowed and under her thumb. She wants the person Delphine vowed no longer to be.

 

 

 

When she gets back down to the lab, terrified of what might have happened in her absence, Cosima stirs in her bed and blearily finds her glasses, shoving them back on her nose.

“Hey, stranger,” she says, croaky and grimacing, when she sees Delphine.

She props herself up on her pillows, waves Delphine away when she tries to help.

"You scared me," Delphine says, and finds her hand.

"Just trying to keep you on your toes, Cormier," she says, but the joke is ruined by how thick her voice sounds. It’s agonizing to see her so broken down and pale, so small against the antiseptic colour of her sheets.

Delphine tries to smile but it cracks, her eyes wet in the corners. She squeezes Cosima's hand, squeezes so she knows she's not going anywhere, squeezes until she feels the fine bones hard against her own.

“Hey.”

Delphine looks up from the join of their hands, tries to keep it together.

“You said yourself this treatment was a band-aid. It’s not like some whopping great surprise that I had a total breakdown,” Cosima flicks at one of Delphine’s curls with her free fingers. “We knew it was coming.”

“That doesn’t make it less scary, Cosima; I thought you were dying. Your blood was on my hands.”

Cosima looks at her, something dark in her eyes. “My blood has always been on your hands.”

It’s a barb that stings hard because it’s true, and Delphine feels that familiar wash of guilt sluice through her veins. Cosima doesn’t look apologetic; she has never looked apologetic about hurting Delphine, but she knows she deserves that.

"Delphine," Cosima says, clearing her throat. "I need you to do something, right now, for me."

"Of course. Anything."

Cosima pulls herself up to sitting, threads her fingers through Delphine's, and lets her gaze rest on her mouth. "I need you to kiss me."

"Cosima..."

"What?” she says, doing her best to sound teasing. “You afraid of my cooties?"

"Cosima, you are sick. It's not... you should be resting, not kissing."

Cosima can't help the faint grin that crosses her face. She is determined, _determined_ to not let this be the conversation Delphine wants it to be.

"You _are_ afraid of cooties."

Delphine frowns. "I am not."

Cosima lifts her chin, smiling for real. "Prove it."

Delphine is used to the taste of blood. Cosima tastes of that sickening red, of metal, of something burning too bright and too fast. Cosima licks her teeth and Delphine tastes blood, tastes the slide of her tongue and the heat of her breath, awkwardly climbing onto the cot and navigating the sheets between them. Cosima kisses weaker than she used to, but it is easy to take the lead, easy to press into the warm noises she makes at the back of her throat. Cosima may be dying, but she will be fire until the end.

Her hands find Delphine’s hips, palms skidding over where her shirt has ridden up, fingers hooking into her belt loops. It’s entirely uncomfortable, completely precarious, having sex on wheels, but Delphine is wrapped up now – nerves singing from Cosima’s touch, her hips roughing with a hot, fluttering ache – there’s no slowing down. She just hopes Scott and Ethan are gone for the day, not about to swipe in at any moment.

Cosima, she thinks, might just tell them to watch, and Delphine wouldn’t have a word to say against it.

Soon, with her breaths coming in short, pitching gasps, Cosima reaches down and manages to kick a leg out of her pants and underwear, her other hand grazing against Delphine’s cheek.

She kisses down Cosima’s sternum, over her rucked up shirt, across the plane of her stomach. Delphine wishes she could pull this disease from Cosima's body, draw it out with her mouth; lure it up from the flesh it has burrowed into with its great red bite. In lieu of that, though, she will try her best to bury it for as long as she can.

Cosima arches, bowing back with a rustling slide against the sheets when Delphine finds her with her mouth, an arm curling around Cosima’s thigh.

She is red with fire and she is red with blood, and there is nothing Delphine wants more than to map brittle constellations into the slippery skin beneath her tongue forever, to love Cosima until the Earth turns dark and swallows itself whole.

And here, inside the clanking, humming automaton of the DYAD, it dawns on her how much this feels like goodbye.

Cosima shudders under her, her orgasm a tired, quiet ripple. She catches the tears at the corners of her eyes before Delphine can notice them, and Delphine resolutely ignores the prickling in the corners of her own. Cosima kisses her hard and sweet, and smiles up at her like they might be anywhere else.

“You know what?” she says, and Delphine watches the catch of her teeth on her lip. “I bet ice cream would totally help with this whole sickness deal.”

Delphine smiles. “Eskimo pies, I assume?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then I will go get some,” she replies, grateful for the out. She rests her hand on Cosima’s chest a moment longer, feels her heart pulse reassuringly under her palm, then gets up.

She wants to say more, she wants to say everything, she wants to tell Cosima there is a ringing in her ears that gets louder and sharper the further she moves away. She wants Cosima to know that some perpetual, diamond-hard piece of her has lodged somewhere in her heart and will never come out.

Instead, she taps the end of Cosima’s nose with a finger. “Drink some water, mon amour. I will be back soon.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

 

 

Delphine leaves the lab feeling picked at by crows, wants desperately to burn the place down around her and watch the flames ride across its blackened bones. They have done this, these mechanical people in their mindless glowing machine. Ethan Duncan, with his ancient technology and his wide-eyed wonder at Cosima’s unique and spectacular human-ness, has done this.

It isn’t fair.

She doesn’t want to do what everyone else wants anymore. Leekie, dead in the ground. Rachel, in her ivory tower. The science, in its colours and codes and carefully constructed sequences.

Delphine doesn’t want to be a tool, she wants to be a weapon.

One thing matters to her now. And one thing is crystal clear.

 

 _You are running out of time_.

 

 


End file.
